By Elizabeth D’Arcy-Potts, VP of ROW Sales, Pipeline360
In the last few years, buyers have made all the moves, mapping out new purchasing pathways – wherever and whenever suits them – proceeding on a journey of least influence in unassisted digital-first bliss. They staged a coup while we worked from home, disembarked from the traditional buyer’s journey, and re-made the process in their design, skipping stops and stages, and leaving all calls waiting.
For marketers, time has stood still. Technology hasn’t kept pace and neither have budgets or headcounts, and compliance and regulations have added further complications, turning reaching buyers into navigating a maze.
Traditional Demand-Side Platforms (DSPs) aren’t designed to meet the needs of B2B marketers – as the industry is geared towards B2C programmatic campaigns – leaving few options to run compliant, scalable, account-based orchestration campaigns.
That needs to change.
For too long, marketers have seen brand awareness and demand generation as separate tactics, when they work much better together. Aligning them – an approach called Branded Demand – ensures a warm reception. Priming prospects before sales engages, boosts performance by nearly 40%, increasing return on investment at scale.
A Branded Demand strategy involves amplifying compelling content through targeted account-based display while also using content syndication (CS) to maximise reach and drive high-quality leads. Sales can then nurture relationships and help decision-makers with trusted advice, insights and assets, rather than pushing for meetings and demos.
By running display and CS simultaneously marketers can achieve the highest Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). CS drives demand by targeting specific titles and functional areas, while display campaigns build brand awareness across entire companies.
A B2B display advertising platform purpose-built for B2B marketers, such as ours, will help them transform their tactics to maximise returns, by tackling the key challenges facing B2B marketers in today’s landscape: achieving branded demand.
Remedying B2B Challenges
A specialised B2B display ad platform helps tackle many of the challenges B2B marketers face today, such as:
Precise targeting: B2B marketers need to reach niche audiences, often defined by job titles, industries, or specific companies, so first-party segments are crucial. It’s gold-standard data, direct from the source, that’s more accurate, actionable, and targetable, and advanced technology at the heart of our new platform creates it.
ABM: Target Account Lists, for example, can be converted into first-party account-based segments, representing users from your key companies. This allows for more carefully curated audience segments and enhances your Account Based Marketing (ABM) campaigns by allowing for personalised messaging to specific accounts or companies, which is not available on general ad platforms.
Unlike generic segments available on most display marketplaces, first-party segments are tailored to your specific needs and target audiences, ensuring you reach the right people and maximising efficiency and return on investment.
By controlling the data that feeds into these segments, data quality and performance are maintained, leading to more precise and effective ad delivery.
Personalisation: B2B advertising often requires more complex and tailored messaging, as it addresses specific pain points and solutions relevant to a business audience. A B2B display ad platform allows for greater customisation of creative assets and messaging that resonate with professionals rather than consumers.
Compliance: Maintaining compliance and protecting brand integrity are crucial, especially when working in industries like finance, healthcare, or tech. A specialised B2B display platform can set up campaigns to only serve ads to already opted-in leads collected via CS, allowing marketers to stay one-step ahead of the SFO and avoid hefty fines.
Sales cycles: B2B sales often involve longer decision-making processes compared to B2C. A B2B ad platform can allow marketers to nurture leads over time, through sequential messaging and retargeting, keeping a brand top-of-mind throughout the sales cycle.
Toward B2B Pipeline Growth
Buyers, we’ve caught up. We’re back on track.
This targeted approach improves efficiency, drives higher-quality leads, and maximises return on investment for B2B campaigns.
By combining first-party segment targeting with advanced AI optimisation to easily orchestrate display with CS programs, marketers are able to unlock the benefits of Branded Demand to secure predictable pipeline and revenue.
With the right tools in hand, marketers can now deliver the personalised and seamless journey buyers have been waiting for.
